I guess this is why au revoir is not exactly goodbye

We tried to leave Sunday, but our flight was canceled.  We were supposed to leave at 1:40 Sunday, but did not leave until 6 pm Monday.

During our drive to Orleans we drove through the town of Fontainebleau, a town built around the Fontainebleu Chateau.  It is not far from Orly airport, so we decided to make the most of our delay, and stayed there for a night.

Our hotel was right across the street from the Chateau, so it was very easy to tour the Chateau.  While I wouldn't tell anyone not to tour the inside of the chateau, it is amazing (and absolutely huge), the inside is similar to what you see on other mansion tours.  As Bean said, if you have seen one chateau, you've seen them all.  And it is not cheap, at 10 euros a piece.   The reason I say it would be possible to skip the inside is that the gardens outside are absolutely beautiful, and free.  I found it much more peaceful to walk the grounds and look at the chateau from the outside, then to tour the inside.

Although, I must say this library is pretty impressive.

Here are a couple of other pictures of the inside:

I won't go on and on.  We enjoyed Fontainebleau, it is definitely worth a day trip, or an overnight.  And I heard from our hotel keeper that there is a fine golf course in the area ;-).

Here are some pictures from the outside of Fontainebleau, including the gardens.

Here is the view from our hotel room, and of our hotel.

The town is quaint, and many inviting restaurants, and shops.  Though most were closed, because it was a Sunday.  (Sunday is a really quiet day in France).

Au revoir

All good things must come to an end and so has our time in Paris.  We originally were going to go home yesterday (Sat, July 14), but later realized that it was Bastille Day (the French July 4th) so we extended our trip one day and are glad we did.  The day began with a military parade down the Champs followed by an afternoon of people walking around the city, which created a lively, fun atmosphere.

Joe already uploaded a video of the parade (or really post parade since we couldn't get close enough to see the actual parade).

Unfortunately, the theme of not being quite close enough continued for the fireworks.  We watched the 30+ minute fireworks show from our balcony.  We walked over to the Eiffel Tower earlier to confirm the vantage point from our apt and were sure that we'd be able to see it all from our balcony, but it turns out we had an obstructed view so we could only see the really high fireworks (see video below).  The theme this year was "Disco" and we could hear all the music from our balcony (every song was from the US so we felt like we were at a wedding).  It was still fun to hear the music and take in the atmosphere, but we were a little disappointed about our view, although we could see a good bit of the finale.  I guess it just gives us a reason to come back to see another Bastille Day, but you can probably tell from reading our blog that we don't really need another reason.

It was a wonderful trip and we're sad to see it end, but we have a feeling we'll be back one day soon!

Modeling

My early modeling career.

Bastille Day Parade

Here is a short video of some highlights of the parade that we never actually saw as it was going on.

We pieced this together from the edges of the parade, and were lucky enough to have the military vehicles pass us on their way out of town, giving us a personal, if also a fast-paced rendition of the parade.  Heading to dinner, and a walk, will update about the day later.

Tomb of Philippe Pot - French Sculptures from the XVth Century

Finding Philippe Pot's Tomb was Gina's goal.  Or as we both came to call it, that statue with the Monks.  A much more worthy goal than my Rembrandt obsession.  I think the fact that the Holland section was closed during our 2008 visit clouded my vision a bit.  I mean I like Rembrandt, but the reality did not live up to my mind's hype.

Four years ago we walked around the corner and encountered Philippe Pot.  Not noting that name turned out to make the pursuit of our reuniting more difficult than it needed to be.  We thought we might just run into the statue yesterday, but sore feet, and a misguided sense of the period of the statue led us astray.

We did remember how striking the statue was, and were unwilling to concede defeat.  We knew that today the Louvre was open for free.  Since our four day museum pass was still valid, we did not necessarily view that as a positive for easily entering the Louvre.

After visiting the D'Orsay Museum this morning we walked across the Seine to see if the Louvre would prove to be an absolute madhouse.  We saw a long line to get into the glass pyramid, but also saw a couple of signs that led to a different entrance for those who already held tickets.  Usually holding tickets only means that you can bypass the long line for bag checking, what we found was that on days that the Louvre is free, holding tickets provides you with access to a side entrance that almost seemed to be a private entrance for just us, for how easy access turned out to be.  (Note: this entrance may always be available for ticket holders, this was the first time we saw it.)

I had done a little internet searching the previous evening to pinpoint where the statue was.  It turned out to be a French sculpture from the 15th century.  We both thought of it as more of a middle aged statue, possibly from the 11th or 12th century, and did not think that it as French.  We had been so close, walking in just about every room around it,  but never thinking to enter the French Sculpture section.

Below are a video and some pictures detailing the statue, with close-ups of the haunting faces of the monks.  This turned out to be a worthy reason to visit the Louvre for the third time in three days.

Walking - Catacombs - Cuisine du Bar - Poilane Bakery

I had no idea how many people would be at the Catacombs.  I am guessing it is such a small space, that any amount of people can cause quite a backup.  One reason we didn't stay was because we were unsure of how the inside would be, especially with a crowd.  It would have been a waste to spend three hours waiting, then decide that the atmosphere was too claustrophobic.

So we stopped for lunch at Cuisine du Bar.  We ate here on our last visit.  We saw it on a show by Ina Garten.  She focused on both the Poilane Bakery and this little restaurant.  While the bakery is mentioned on a lot of websites and guidebooks, you really would need someone to tell you about this little restaurant.

The atmosphere is nothing to speak of, in fact if you are looking for French charm, this is not the place (although the street itself is very nice).  But if you are looking for a delicious, simple meal, this really hits the spot.  It is really an ingenious idea.  They only have a couple of toasters to prepare the meals.  (This picture shows the whole operation, there is no kitchen.)

They get their bread from the bakery next door (they may be co-owned).  They may have a total of twenty ingredients for their whole menu.  Bean got tomato and mozzarella, while I got roasted chicken with mayo (underneath the chicken) and capers.  The capers worked perfectly with the sandwich, which, surprisingly to me, was served cold on toasted bread.

After lunch Bean went next door to buy Butter cookies.  The bakery knows what they do well, they do not deviate far.  They have a few pastries, but really specialize in Sourdough bread (very large loaves) and butter cookies in a few different shapes.  They provide the spoon shaped butter cookies that we have had with our coffee in a few restaurants.

From here we walked to the Louvre, an easy walk.  One of us will blog about this later - right now we are going to walk to see the Bastille Day parade.

I'll include our walk here, you can see how walkable the city is.  (A) is our apartment, (B) are the Catacombs, (C) is Cuisine du Bar and Poilane Bakery, (D) is the Louvre.





Agrandir le plan

Too tired to blog

This will probably be my shortest entry yet and some of you may be glad to not have to read through all my details.  We had a wonderful day today and probably walked 10 miles all over the city.  We started the day early trying to go to the Catacombs (one of Joe's friends said his height wouldn't be a problem and that it was worth it to go).  When we got there we saw a huge line and learned it would be a 3 hour wait so once again the Catacombs will have to wait for another visit.  We spent the rest of the day walking around, had lunch at Cuisine de Bar (a cute place next to Poilane bakery that serves delicious open-faced sandwiches) and then spent several hours at the Louvre.  Below are some photos of our day.  Tonight we had our second dinner at La Fontaine de Mars and now have the TV show on that Joe blogged about earlier.  We can make out a few words, but overall can't understand what they are seeing, but it seems like the Law and Order of Paris!

Television Show

Last night I had the tv on after Gina went to bed, just for background noise.  I saw a commercial for the a show with the actors that we saw filming on the Seine.  I mistakenly thought the title of the show was "Demain," before realizing that demain means tomorrow.  They were actually advertising that it will be on tonight.

The actual title is Boulevard du Palais - and I was right,  it is a police show.  It has been on since 1999, but has only filmed 41 episodes, only a few episodes each year.  We saw the two main actors, Anne Richard and Jean-Francois Balmer in the scene.

Would love to watch it tonight, it is on at 8:35, but doubt we will be in the apartment.

My Quest for Rembrandt

My main goal today was to see the Dutch wing of the Louvre.  When we were here four years ago the Flemish, Belgian and Dutch section was closed for renovation.  Today I should have checked the schedule more carefully, because the section was once again closed, but only for the day.  The Louvre is so large that they close different sections each day.  One cannot succeed on a Rembrandt quest on a Thursday.  We will return tomorrow.

Before going to the Louvre, we visited the Musee de L'Orangerie today, famous for its two rooms that are encircled by Monet's Water Lilies paintings wrapping around on the walls.  We were not allowed to take photos in those rooms, but were able to do so in the other rooms.  If you saw Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, you are familiar with what these rooms look like.  Honestly, I didn't know about this museum before that movie.  It is tucked in the tulleries, a beautiful garden that is next to the Louvre.

We did get some pictures of the other paintings in the museum.  The painters that were familiar to me were Cezanne, Renoir, Rousseau, Matisse, Monet and Picasso.  Bean really enjoyed the Matisse paintings, while my highlights were the Cezanne's.  I would have loved to see more by Rousseau, but this is not a very large museum.

The focus of the museum seemed to be the transition from impressionism (post-impressionism) to modernism.  You could really see how the painters start to play with shapes and forms, kind of playing games with perspective.  Below are some of the pictures from the museum.

Here are Gina's favorites from De L'Orangerie.

We also visited the Les Arts Decoratits - it is a part of the Louvre, but it has a separate entrance.  Gina was really interested in the Louis Vuitton/Marc Jacobs exhibit.  But it was too hot and crowded to fully enjoy.  We did take some photos (below).